Nvidia The Way It's Meant to be Played 2013 (Day Two)

Day two of Nvidia's The Way It's Meant to be Played event has come to a close with the green team making a bevy of announcements. The company announced that the Shield will be able to turn into a quasi-console with a future update, its innovative G-Sync monitor technology, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, and more.

Meet the rebranded GeForce GTX 670

If you poke around Nvidia's website, you may notice a new addition to its GeForce graphics card section for desktops. It's the GeForce GTX 760 Ti, a new part that's intended for OEM partners. Product images and full system specs are posted on Nvidia's website, and at a glance, this appears to be a rebranded GeForce GTX 670 graphics card. Let's have a look at what makes this thing tick.

AMD steals thunder from Nvidia's press event

Nvidia is hosting a two-day press event in Montreal, but it's AMD that's stealing some of the headlines. The Sunnyvale chip designer decided to crash Nvidia's party by setting up shop in a hotel across the street to showcase its Radeon R9 290X graphics card and compare benchmarks against Nvidia's GeForce GTX 780 part. It's a brazen tactic and we hear Nvidia isn't real happy with AMD's stunt, but GPU politics aside, we have some benchmarks AMD is allowing the media to share.

How low will it go?

For a brief time yesterday, we noticed that Newegg had the MSI Radeon HD 7990 (R7990-6GD5) dual-GPU graphics card on sale for $550 after a $30 rebate card. The price has since gone back up to $890, but there are still a few deals to be found, and perhaps more on the way. That's pretty impressive when you consider these cards were hovering around $1,000 just a little while ago.

Lower prices in effect today

It seems like we're always saying it's a great time to be a PC gamer, and certainly that holds true today. Part of what makes that true right now is a series of price cuts by Nvidia on a handful of graphics cards, including the company's GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 1GB, GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB, and GeForce GTX 660. Many Boost cards come with a $75 in-game credit voucher, and most 660s come with a voucher for a free copy of Batman Arkham Origins, while supplies last.

AMD’s Bonaire takes on Nvidia’s Boosted 650 Ti

Last month, AMD announced an all-new GPU dubbed the HD 7790 1GB based on new silicon named "Bonaire" that, at $150, was designed to slot in between its HD 7770 and the more-expensive HD 7850. Not surprisingly, Nvidia then announced a revamped “Boost” version of its GTX 650 Ti, with added support for dual-card SLI, higher clock speeds, and a 2GB frame buffer, countering AMD’s effort and shoring up what both companies refer to as the "GPU sweet spot." This month, AMD counterattacks Nvidia's counterattack with a 2GB version of the HD 7790 from Sapphire, leveling the playing field and raising the stakes by including a super-sweet game bundle. Can Nvidia's revamped 650 Ti Boost dominate the midrange GPU field, or is AMD's new silicon the better deal? And how do they measure up to the former champs in this price range? To help settle this feud once and for all, we benchmarked not just the new guys, but all of the cards in this tax bracket.

Note: This article was originally featured in the July 2013 issue of the magazine.

Watch as AMD unveils its new GPU, sponsored games, and more

AMD's GPU14 Tech Day press conference is about to begin and we're live in Hawaii to cover the event. We will update this live blog as more info comes in. You should expect AMD to officially announce its new GPU, codenamed Hawaii (pictured to the right), along with other announcements that include new software tools for developers and new AMD sponsored games.

The lowdown on AMD's next enthusiast GPU

Sometime in the near future, AMD will hold a press event to spill the beans on its next generation Radeon graphics card series. In the meantime, we're left to speculate what the Sunnyvale chip designer has up its sleeve, and much of the speculation has pointed to a die shrink to 20nm. As it turns out, however, AMD has no such plans to pursue 20nm GPUs in the immediate future.

Don't be surprised if Nvidia launches another budget GPU in 2013

It was previously rumored that Nvidia might end the year with a bang by unveiling a GeForce GTX Titan Ultra and/or GTX 790 graphics card, but maybe the GPU maker also has something a little more affordable up its sleeve. A GPU-Z screenshot posted to a Chinese-language website indicates that a GeForce GTX 750 Ti is in the works, serving as a successor to the GeForce GTX 650 Ti launched last year.